Nature Vs Nurture Debate

Debate on the Nature Versus Nurture controversy dates back to 1869 when the phrase was first conceived by Francis Galton, a man who had wide-ranging knowledge. Galton began to investigate further on the nature versus nurture debate when his half-cousin, Charles Darwin, publicized On the Origin of Species, where Darwin first began his study on the theory of evolution. Intrigued by Darwin’s theories and ideas, Galton publicized two books exploring inheritance, and evolution of traits. Since Galton believed that intelligence was mostly inherited, he favored nature more over nurture. (Nature vs Nurture. (n.d.). Retrieved November 5, 2015). Although, Galton was on nature’s side in the debate, he also believed that nurture played an impacting role …show more content…
Everything from how someone may look, to their personality and behavioral genes, are all characteristics that someone who sides with nature, a nativist, would believe. Simply put, people who are born gay, can say they were born gay since they have a gay gene. Another topic that’s spoken about is how criminals can be justified with the fact that they’re prone to aggressive actions by their behavioral genes. One final example that could be shared would be the cases with identical twins. Even when the twins are split from birth, they still tend to similarities in behavior, and respond to questions and situations as if they’d been raised …show more content…
Though, not many people take this smaller side, with protests of each side having too many “cold hard facts”, people believe that it’s an all or nothing. Instead of nowadays people ask how much nature or nurture affects a child’s development. Stating that environment and heredity both affect the persons someone becomes, it’s only a question of which has a bigger influence. Using intelligence as an example, Galton had said that those who are intelligent would have geniuses because of natural superiority, and that better breeding could improve human society. The same “how much” aspect was tried to be used for behavior in human, though, researchers found out that the same aspect cannot be used since behavior is a complex, many-sided phenomenon that shows itself in many ways. “How much” infers that dependent variable can be shown numerically and that a problem can be resolved in a quantitative manner. (McLeod, S. (2007). Nature Nurture in Psychology | Simply Psychology. Retrieved November 5, 2015). When in reality, it is that both nature and nurture interact with each other in a variety of different ways. There are also factors that can be applied which explain nature and nurture further, and why people side with either nature or nurture. These factors would be, environmental, gender, and

Show More